Well, Bush on the execution was his own devising. Off the cuff. People don’t seem to mind much.

And mindless white liberals and stupid blacks seem fine with war jokes, killing jokes, as long as it is Obama making the jokes… Ob studiously ignoring race – – other then using his own for elections.. or erecting a defense for himself, using race.

I think unconsciously, it is why I got busy to reintroduce myself to coffee again (it was rough but I kept at it, by now I can have a cup without any extreme reaction)…. I could nto have stood to watch something set in NO and be unable to have a cup of cofee.

I also via Netfix am watching the Bourdain series, just saw season 1 ep 1… Paris and NJ. I’d have suffered thru the Paris segment (and, it was better than I had expected it to be) if I was stil unable to drink coffee…

I am working my way thru them… and started picking out of order for the next two or three. The next one coming has a segment (1 of 5) in New Orleans…

The other so poignant thing about Treme, is that it was filmed before BP. I mean, when Desautel’s was struggling, at least it could offer, when she could pay COD, but it could offer Gulf shellfish and oysters.

A local channel here, while that damned fucking thing was still gushing, went to the Gulf coast of Mexico, to check on decades later aftermath of the horrible PEMEX gulf oil spill in the 70s, think it was 79. The oysters are still there, but no one bothers to harvest them. They taste of oil.

yup. Ob and Feinberg and all the BPers will just keep moving on the big screen of life…. Alive and well. I took particular note Ob said in AL he had just never seen nothin’ like that.

So easy to forget he was in NO several times in the wake of Katrina, at least once he flew down with Bush on AF 1 (and later scrubbed his site of his remarks on Katrina, that race had nothing to do with it). But history and historic is just so fleeting.

😆 It’s hard out there for a pimp.

One of the commentaries I listened to on the Treme discs said in the year following Katrina, the city alone (to say nothing of the whole of the affected Gufl coast) had a suicide rate 4 x the national average.

I’m sick of the free pass given the libertarian blather, “The state is the only source of coercive power.” I doubt that many non-libertarians buy that assetion, but they too often remain silent because most libertarians are rabid on that issue and arguing with them is like talking to a wall. But since that bogus assertion has been showing up increasingly in comments here as right-wing plants are becoming more common, I might as well do a quick shred, since it does not take much effort to show this claim is nonsense.

Let’s look at some simple empirical examples of why this pet argument just ain’t so. The first comes from Tom Ferguson:

American history is replete with examples of business groups and individual firms retaining vast armies of military and paramilitary forces for long periods of time. In the nineteenth century many railroads kept private armies. The Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police ran their own Obrigkeitsstaat [authoritarian state] for decades. General Motors maintained the Black Legion; Ford sported a veritable Freikorps recruited by the notorious Henry Bennett; and any number of detective agencies, goon squads, “special consultants,” and wiretappers have also been active. . . . Force on such a scale potentially menaces competitors, buyers, and suppliers almost as much as it does workers.

Some modern versions of coercion don’t involve actual harm, but credible threats. For instance, I know three different lawyers who have been suing banks who have gotten ugly warnings (and some follow-up action, like break ins and messages specifying where children were on specific days; one is spending $20,000 a month on bodyguards).

Everybody should see Coppola’s The Conversation. All those private parties, including now, again, paramilitaries, may work at times for governments, but they are ”for hire”. To anybody.

Libertarian beliefs are fine, but Big L libertarians are, in my book, a joke. They exist to make R look mainstream. One reason R like to have a L in local races and debates… Most of the ones I have come across had a big slice of Thug in the make up.

I haven’t watched the video at this link: Workers Leaving the Googleplex, but Andrew Norman Wilson‘s post, below his video, is a much needed, unveiling of the google, do no evil culture:

…. However, a fourth class exists at Google that involves strictly data-entry labor, or more appropriately, the labor of digitizing. These workers are identifiable by their yellow badges [oh, why not a star? He notes further in the piece that the yellow badgers are predominately people of color. – diane], and they go by the team name ScanOps. They scan books, page by page, for Google Book Search. The workers wearing yellow badges are not allowed any of the privileges that I was allowed – ride the Google bikes, take the Google luxury limo shuttles home, eat free gourmet Google meals, attend Authors@Google talks and receive free, signed copies of the author’s books, or set foot anywhere else on campus except for the building they work in. They also are not given backpacks, mobile devices, thumb drives, or any chance for social interaction with any other Google employees. Most Google employees don’t know about the yellow badge class. Their building, 3.14159~ [oh how witty, the ratio of the circumferance of a circle to its diameter, otherwise known as pi[e], building – diane], was next to mine, and I used to see them leave everyday at precisely 2:15 PM, like a bell just rang, telling the workers to leave the factory. Their shift starts at 4 am.

I found this social arrangement interesting, and at a certain point I decided to investigate the rationale behind Google’s decision to exclude the yellow badge class from most privileges the company has to offer, despite the fact that their labor takes place in a Google building with a Google sign out front and are being contracted to Google by another company just like my team, and just like other informational laborers, the kitchen staff, the shuttle drivers, the custodians, and more.

I’m surprised it’s been kept so quiet, then again, further on in the piece, he discusses the tight security. I tend to disagree with him about how many of the workers didn’t know…. Probably well known in the black and hispanic communities,… almost certainly known by Eshoo, Boxer, DIFI, Pukesom, the Brown[s], et al, ..likely known by the entirety of the 2008 pretzel candidates who ALL slobbered at the googleplex.

I thought it was only Eshoo, for Mountain View House Rep (and much/all? of Palo Alto), will go look.

He does leave the nationality somewhat blank. There is a large population of black and hispanic Temp workers from East Palo alto and East Menlo, neighboring the googleplex …..I’m sure ManPower, et al, absolutely luvv them.

oh I agree hon, there’s nothing which particularly stands out as being “illegal,” just hideously inhumane, ….particularly for a State, and Industry, which has a totally undeserved National Reputation as being liberal, race conscious, gender conscious (curious as to the proportion of females, as the wimmins have been historically ‘treasured’ for those nimble, dexterous fingers, and calmer natures when faced with hideous mind numbing jobs) etc., …sigh

I could see them not knowing the details, any of the details…. But what they do know is that there are fewer and fewer good jobs. More and more is out sourced or cheap labor brought in, or various types of contract workers are brought in, etc. Period.

Yellow badges sounds like internal security to me, frankly. On site tracking.

All I can think about with the yellow badges, are yellow, ghetto stars, they’re not stupid, and the Jew Wash is so prevalent, I can’t imagine them not connecting those dots, with the yellow badge decision…

Yeah, the reps probably don’t know the details …and yeah, … certainly did everything they could,..to keep from directly knowing them, …most especially in their written and teleconned communications.

WASHINGTON, DC (BNO NEWS) — US President Barack Obama will address the nation in an unusual late-night speech on Sunday evening, the White House said, without disclosing the subject. The address is expected at around 10.30 pm Eastern. …

CBS is reporting the speech will be about Usama b laden. (caught him? killed him? Lost him again?)

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.